


power to the people (escape to the country)

by JazzApples



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, and it is short introspective vague and pretentious drabbles, i only know how to write one type of fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27086347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzApples/pseuds/JazzApples
Summary: Red, power, and choice.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	power to the people (escape to the country)

**Author's Note:**

> Me, one year ago: plays transistor for the first time, cries and has idea for this fic. Never writes the fic.  
> Me, now: plays hades, remembers how good transistor was, finally writes fic.  
> Me: ???? profit.

At the start of her life, Red regarded the polls with a sense of reverence. The power of the people, able to shape even the cityscape itself. To hold such the power of change itself was awe inspiring, made her feel important. 

Then, at that fateful concert where the rioting broke out, she came to an abrupt realisation, sat in a daze in the back of the car as her driver took her and her old friend back home, to safety. 

Staring through the blacked out windows at the streets of Goldwalk going past, she could barely remember what those buildings were, or the buildings before them, or the buildings before them. Everyday the citizens of Cloudbank voted for new additions to the city to satisfy their ever changing whims, what parks they wanted, or where they wanted to move the city hall. But what did it all mean? What did it all _matter?_

Because the power they held, that _she_ held, was false in appearance. At the end of the day, when the parks were built and the buildings moved to a more agreeable plot, everything was still the same. The same kinds of buildings still existed no matter where they were. The features voted in were replaced with other features that were voted in that were replaced again. Buildings shuffled around and landed back where they started all to be shuffled around again like changing seasons. And the seasons changed with the wind, as the wind changed with the cast of a vote. 

And they called that power. But power over what? 

What she had felt tonight was power. All it took to incite that riot was the sound of her voice. The tone of her melody, the stanzas of her song had the crowd marching to the beat of her drum. 

And she realised that, in that moment, she could have told them anything and have her own army. 

That was power. 

Now, through the winking lights of the city, the adrenaline had left her a shell of the thrum of blood and commanding presence she had been on the stage. The power had turned in on itself, the crowd pitted against each other with Red unable to control it. A two edged sword, she had cut herself on her own blade. 

Like it or not, this was her power now, and she must learn to use it responsibly. 

* * *

Now, where once the cityscape of Cloudbank shone with every colour of the spectrum, all had returned to white where once it came. With all the city as her canvas, all Red had to do was think a command for the whole city to bow to her wishes. Once she had thought herself, deep inside of her that night in the car, as the commander of armies. Now, she was a god. 

And like that night in the car, when she realised the power she had believed in all her life, the power of the people, paled in comparison to the power of her self, her voice, her ideas, the ultimate power she held now in her hands was but a pale reflection of what she once had. It was the same thing all over again. The rise and fall of the same buidings in a cycle on a much bigger scale, transient and fleeting, where anything she wanted she could change, but in the end, all the things that mattered remained, like the bedrock once all the river had washed far away. 

How ironic, that after everything, the Camerata had a point. 

But she wouldn't be like them, making their choices by taking others away. She wouldn't play by their rules. She'd choose her own, her way. 

One last song away was her old friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway games as lit made a real great video analysing this game go watch it, its basically this fic but better articulated.  
> tumblr: jazzapples3


End file.
